the reward for total abstinence from alcohol seems, illogically enough, to be the capacity for becoming intoxicated without it.

Did St. Francis preach to the birds? Whatever for? If he really liked birds he would have done better to preach to the cats.

Everyone realizes that one can believe little of what people say about each other. But it is not so widely realized that even less can one trust what people say about themselves.

There are acacias, a graceful species amusingly devitalized by sentimentality, this kind drooping its leaves with the grace of a young widow bowed in controllable grief, this one obscuring them with a smooth silver as of placid tears. They please, like the minor French novelists of the eighteenth century, by suggesting a universe in which nothing cuts deep.

Why must you always try to be omnipotent, and shove things about? Tragic things happen sometimes that we just have to submit to.

There is nothing rarer than a man who can be trusted never to throw away happiness, however eagerly he sometimes grasps it. In history we are as frequently interested in our own doom.

The American struggle for the vote was much more difficult than the English for the simple reason that it was much more easy.